Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

futureofhumanityinstitute.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 319 posts

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#81

Post by Emma_Goldman »

esafak wrote: post #35
constantcrying wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are confusing EA and e/acc. EA was about billionaires defrauding the population who entrusted them with their money to give away to whatever cause was deemed best by the current "scientific" consensus in EA. Causes can include things like the suffering of fish or AI ending the known universe. e/acc is about doing capitalism so hard so that AI will solve every problem.

That's not true. sbf was about that, but EA is not. Are there other cases of EA fraud?

Well, that's the point in question. For its critics, the whole enterprise is a misguided sham. See Leif Wenar's stimulating recent piece, 'The Deaths of Effective Altruism', which sees SBF less as aberration, than symptom.

https://www.wired.com/story/deaths-of-effective-altruism/

I think EA was naive from the start, both in its unreflective moral realism, and its reduction of complicated questions of social theory down to back-of-the-envelope utility calculations based on threadbare empirics.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#82

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

stainablesteel wrote: post #25

i'm honestly glad, there seems to be a lot of places that may as well be called "the institute of impending doom for all of humanity" and i just don't care for this fear-based grant entrenchment, it gets us nowhere. people who are pioneering the front lines of any technology understand risk better than people who write about it

> people who are pioneering the front lines of any technology understand risk better than people who write about it

That's far from guaranteed, and we have a long history of lessons written in blood that says otherwise. The people pioneering a technology are going to be self-selected to be the most optimistic about its potential and the most dismissive of its negative impacts.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#83

Post by throwaway290 »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #55
exo-pla-net wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a smear taken out of context. What Bostrom actually had to say is both accurate and mild: > “I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct,” the quoted excerpt begins. “Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sen…

I wonder if these people ever paused to consider they aren't as smart as they think they are, if they're just figuring out some basics of human communication in their mid 20s that my 8 year old has known for years.

The irony is that you are looking at an example where a guy literally paused to consider how he was not so smart about communication. He also shared it with others who can also lack this skill

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#84

Post by colechristensen »

neilv wrote: post #43

The HN headline, "Future of Humanity Institute shuts down", sounds cynically funny, in context of current problems/challenges. The grandiose name Oxford chose now sounds like they've determined the situation is hopeless.

> in context of current problems/challenges

People have been saying nonsense like this for as long as we have recorded history of people saying anything.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#85

Post by robocat »

throw7 wrote: post #68
exo-pla-net wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a smear taken out of context. What Bostrom actually had to say is both accurate and mild: > “I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct,” the quoted excerpt begins. “Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sen…

I suppose we could also say IQ highly correlates with social ineptitude. Who could've known people wouldn't like you if you made repugnant statements... surely not 'smart' people!

> IQ highly correlates with social ineptitude

Does it?

Being socially ept requires high intelligence. However people that deeply apply their brains to social situations are often unrecognised as being bright in wider society. Although they may well be highly rewarded. And I suspect the very skilled often hide their skill because it's a hidden weapon in political or business negotiations. It is really hard to see applied IQ and you need to be very trusted for someone to explain their thinking: plus you need to be EQ smart to spot others that are EQ smart (and the +ve side of Dunning-Kruger causes problems too).

I think you are alluding to the stereotype of social ineptitude of geeks or academics. Personally I have found that focusing your IQ too tightly into one narrow discipline is not that smart. Really smart geeks seem to also be highly socially capable: IQ is general intelligence. Some of the smartest people I know left school at 15: you won't have highly academic discussions with them because it usually doesn't interest them but their raw IQ shows up in a bunch of other unobvious ways.

Disclaimer: I'm a geeky slow learner - a redundant disclaimer given I'm making comments on HN.

Edit: given we are on HN, here's a good example of Paul Graham deeply recognising someone as smart and socially epter than himself: https://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#86

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #55
exo-pla-net wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a smear taken out of context. What Bostrom actually had to say is both accurate and mild: > “I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct,” the quoted excerpt begins. “Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sen…

I wonder if these people ever paused to consider they aren't as smart as they think they are, if they're just figuring out some basics of human communication in their mid 20s that my 8 year old has known for years.

Has your 8 yr old really known this for years? He may behave in a conformist way, instinctively, without being able to describe it or understand the phenomenon... both of which are, in my opinion, required to know it.

And who's figuring out whose communication? He basically has to draw a picture in crayon of what he means, just so all the rest of you don't misconstrue his meaning. Your "human communication" is much too defective to be so proud of it.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#87

Post by exo-pla-net »

daveguy wrote: post #80
zo1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, topics like this are not always black and white. There is a full-range, nuance and discussion. I'd also wager that the downvotes here are because this flame-bait kind of comments are not appropriate for HN, or if they are appropriate then some might not think it's contributing to the discussion anyways. Me, I think the refusal by some to admit (or accept) that the full-context post adds to the discussion an…

> I'd also wager that the downvotes here are because this flame-bait kind of comments are not appropriate for HN, or if they are appropriate then some might not think it's contributing to the discussion anyways. It's odd to me that calling racism racism when a parent called it not racism is either non-contributing or inflamatory. Seems to me it is warranted.

An assertion without rationale is noise or worse.

"That's racist; cancel them!" falls in the latter category. It's the mindless baying of the rabble. You don't engage with the rabble, as there's no fixing stupid. You just hope they shut up, so that you and the other adults can think, and you hope that the rabble burns down someone else's house.

Analogously, there's not much to be gained from engaging with someone shouting "Allahu Akbar; death to infidels!" That's drone purview.

I hope that helps.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#88

Post by gojomo »

swyx wrote: post #72
dotsam wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tegmark’s institution is the Future of Life Institute, this is the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute. Tegmark’s institute is well-funded, apparently largely due to a big crypto donation from Vitalik Buterin. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/25/a-665m-crypto-war-c...

why do people not like Max Tegmark? he was kind of a rockstar at NeurIPS

My read is that some former fans strongly disagree with, and are thus disappointed by, Tegmark's recent enthusiasm for "AI will kill us all" arguments, & advocacy of strong/intrusive policies against AI progress.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#89

Post by frozenseven »

helboi4 wrote: post #32
exo-pla-net wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a smear taken out of context. What Bostrom actually had to say is both accurate and mild: > “I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct,” the quoted excerpt begins. “Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sen…

Thats.... still racist? Why does he think black people have a lower IQ? Nigerian immigrants to the US are some of the most successful immigrants. Like... black people just do not have lower IQs and to say so is considered very dangerous rhetoric for a reason. The reason we even have pervasive belief that black people are stupider is because it was convenient rhetoric for the colonial powers pillaging Africa and treat…

>Why does he think black people have a lower IQ?

Because of every study that's ever been done on this topic? Pointing this out isn't racist.

>Nigerian immigrants to the US are some of the most successful immigrants.

Typically those immigrants come from among the smartest few %.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#90

Post by daveguy »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #87
daveguy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd also wager that the downvotes here are because this flame-bait kind of comments are not appropriate for HN, or if they are appropriate then some might not think it's contributing to the discussion anyways. It's odd to me that calling racism racism when a parent called it not racism is either non-contributing or inflamatory. Seems to me it is warranted.

An assertion without rationale is noise or worse. "That's racist; cancel them!" falls in the latter category. It's the mindless baying of the rabble. You don't engage with the rabble, as there's no fixing stupid. You just hope they shut up, so that you and the other adults can think, and you hope that the rabble burns down someone else's house. Analogously, there's not much to be gained from engaging with someone sho…

Your conflation of responding "yes it is," when someone claims something is not racist when it clearly is with "that's racist, cancel them!" seems disingenuous. As disingenuous as conflating it to "Allahu Akbar; death to infidels". Correctly identifying a statement as racist when someone else said it wasn't is about as polar opposite as you can get to "death to infidels!" Do you see them as equivalent?
Post reply on HN